[LinuxUsers] advice on "dcfldd:/dev/sda: input/output error" ?

[Randall Whitman]

"input/output error" could be exactly that, errors trying to read a dying HD.
Are there filesystem/disk driver parameters you can tune, to favor retries
over diagnostics?

I do also want to mention that i got the same "input/output error", most
uninformatively so, when the Puppy Linux live CD I was using didnt have
a driver for the early SATA HD (which i was assuming was IDE, oops),
and i tried to run  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda .

Also it is my understanding that (sigh) MS-Windows filesystem leans more
toward retries and less toward warning about drive errors, as compared to
Linux filesystem.

/Randall